Re-photo

Increasingly in England it is getting more problematic to take photographs on the street, with increasing suspicion from both police and public. And of course the police advertising campaign suggesting anyone with a camera was a terrorist suspect and should be reported to them didn’t help any.

Our right in the UK to take photographs in public places has recently been affirmed again by the government. But at the same time they also seem to be one of the parties busily eroding it, with new legislation, and guidance to the police. Judges (and one judge in particular) seem also to have recently tipped the balance in favouring rights to privacy (at least of celebrities) in public places over the rights of photographers and the public at large.

Our right to photograph is also diminished by the increasing privatisation of public spaces. More and more areas of cities to which the public have access are becoming privately owned. Quite large areas of the City of London which appear to most users as public streets which now actually private property, and so too are vast areas such as Canary Wharf. Many of London’s parks are also in private hands – of the Crown. Although you may often get away with taking pictures, you can also, as I’ve found on several occasions, be stopped from doing so.

Even some areas remaining in public hands, such as Trafalgar Square, are covered by by-laws which restrict photography, and although their intention was usually to get commercial photographers to pay for their use of locations, other photographers are at times stopped.

In France, the law relating to photographing people in public seems to be fairly similar to that in the UK. If you can read French, the FreeLens site is a  useful source of information on the various laws that restrict the activities of photojournalists in France – and they also produce a useful booklet you can download,   “Photographe Presse Mode D’Emploi“, essential reading for freelances (pigistes) working there.

This makes clear that people have no rights to their image under the code of Civil Law, but they do have a right of privacy, which has been the subject of interpretation by the courts. As in the UK, in general you can publish pictures of people in public in the press without needing their permission. However it is important to treat the subject suitably and to caption pictures accurately.

Similar rules apply to property that is on public view – so long as it does not amount to a breach of privacy, pictures can be published without the need for authorisation.  However for commercial use, if people or property are an important part of an image, you may have a problem, although it would be necessary for those wishing to make a claim against you to establish an actual cause for complaint.

A difference from the law – if not practice – in the UK is that journalists may photograph freely in the Metro and at railway stations, although videoing or filming needs permission.

French law also forbids publishing recognisable pictures of police doing their duty, except during demonstrations. One of the latest UK laws, the Counter-Terrorism Act, 2008 which received royal assent recently means that photographing a police officer here might also result in a lengthy jail sentence.

The position of artists is perhaps less clear than that of journalists. Certainly in the past there has been considerably more important placed on the rights of individuals over their appearance in France than in the UK or USA.

Which brings me (at last!) on to the the work of Lin Delpierre (b 1962) on show in rue Quincampoix in Paris at the Galerie Cour Carree in November.

‘Passantes‘ shows women walking by the photographer on the streets (the web site has series showing women from Bombay, Buenos Aires and Peking taken on medium format as well as groups of men on the street in Calcutta taken with 5×4  and other work.) As the text makes clear, Delpierre has travelled the world to photograph women in cities, including Rome, Moscow and Barcelona – as well as Paris.

The pictures are taken without permission and apparently often without the knowledge of the women involved, although some seem to be reacting to the presence of the photographer – either by staring or looking away.

Taken with a square format camera, Delpierre normally frames the figures fairly centrally, from perhaps 5 feet ot sometimes a little further away, working perhaps from waist level or slightly higher and seldom if ever showing them below knee level – but with quite a bit a space in the image above their heads. Mostly the subjects are young, and mostly they are at least fairly attractive.

I was in part reminded of Gary Winogrand’s most controversial book ‘Women Are Beautiful‘, although Delpierre’s work doesn’t show the same preoccupation – most of his subjects lack the sexuality that attracted Winogrand, so obviously in the grip of a mammary obsession.

The medium format also cuts down depth of field, and in some images this amounts to almost a dislocation of the subject from background, almost a cardboard cut-out effect,  exaggerated on the web site by over-sharpening. At times he seems to catch women as they step into pools of light, and while on the web this gives the appearance of added flash, the lighting on the works on show appeared more natural.

One report I read about the show suggested that Delpierre’s work  was original in that he worked at a close distance. Hardly so, since many street photographers have prowled for ages with their lenses pre-focussed at a similar distance – including me. Some of us have often mixed black and white with colour also, as he does in his triptychs.

I have to admit to liking Winogrand’s work, although (or because?) it sometimes makes me feel as if I am standing on the street and giving a wolf-whistle at the girls who go by. Not that this was ever the kind of behaviour I indulged in (though I had friends who did.) His pictures have a directness and an openness whereas in fornt of some of Delpierre’s I feel more of a voyeur. This perhaps reflects a different sensibility between the French and English.

I asked if the photographer thought photographing on the street in this way had any problems, and the answer was that there were none – it was a way of working that had a long pedigree in photography and there were no legal or moral issues involved.

To an extent I agree. These are people in public, and their actions are visible to any of us who share their space. Showing them in a photograph doesn’t really alter things, but the act of taking the photograph may. Many women may well feel they are being harassed by the photographer – and were they to see their photograph being exhibited might well feel aggrieved.

I would have been happier if I could have seen a real reason – perhaps documentary – for these images on the street. They reminded me a little of a fascinating series of men and women walking along Sutton High Street around 1930, published in Photographers’ London 1839-45. Nothing seems to be known about the photographer or his reason for making the images, but they are now a fascinating record of their times.

Delpierre’s women, particularly in their clothing, do indicated geographical differences (and the season and weather) but although they were technically fine, I wasn’t too sure I was really able to see the same kind of interest in them, and I don’t think it was the photographer’s intention. But perhaps in 75 years time they too will look different.